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Summary
Summary
The author presents a collection of short fiction loosely based on her own life, including To My Young Husband, which describes life amid the turbulence of the Deep South at the dawn of the civil rights movement.
Author Notes
Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her novel The Color Purple. Her other bestselling novels include By the Light of My Father's Smile, Possessing the Secret of Joy, and The Temple of My Familiar. She is also the author of two collections of short stories, three collections of essays, five volumes of poetry, and several children's books. Her books have been translated into more than two dozen languages. Born in Eaton, Georgia, Walker now lives in Northern California.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
HIn 13 affectionate stories, Walker (The Color Purple; By the Light of My Father's Smile) reflects on the nature of passion and friendship, pondering the emotional trajectories of lives and loves. Some of the pieces are directly autobiographical, as Walker explains in her preface. "To My Young Husband" is about her marriage as a young woman to a Jewish civil rights lawyer and their difficult but mostly happy decade in Mississippi and Brooklyn. Many years later, telling her daughter the story of the marriage, Walker wonders how she and her ex-husband, once so close, could have become such strangers. Other stories are "mostly fiction, but with a definite thread of having come out of a singular life." Old hurts are soothed in "Olive Oil," in which Orelia learns to trust her husband, John, and not visit the sins of the past upon him. In "The Brotherhood of the Saved," Hannah, the lesbian narrator, confronts the bigotry of religion and attempts to save her relationship with her mother, whose fundamentalist church is urging her to ostracize her daughter. A trip to a screening of Deep Throat gets the older woman and two of her friends talking about sex, but true acceptance proves more elusive. Infusing her intimate tales with grace and humor, Walker probes hidden corners of the human experience, at once questioning and acknowledging sexual, racial and cultural rifts. Though a few stories tip into self-indulgence and read less like fiction than personal testimony, this is nonetheless a strong, moving collection. A common theme runs throughoutDwe are all obliged to love and be loved, no matter how blind, inexpert or troublesome we may be. 100,000 first printing; 8-city author tour. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Part memoir, part fiction, and part bibliotherapy, this collection explores several women's heartfelt (and sometimes heartbreaking) relationships with husbands, friends, lovers of both sexes, and family members across generations. The direct homilies about life and love and the "ecology of the soul" have a greeting-card banality, reminiscent of some slogans from the sixties. And yet, it is that generation's struggle for civil rights and for women's rights that fuels Walker's most moving stories and passionate insights. She grabs you from the start with "To My Young Husband," a memoir of her first marriage to a Jewish civil rights lawyer she met on the picket lines in Mississippi. Her account of their decade of happiness and her enduring grief about their breakup ("Did living interracially wear them out?") is achingly personal. Just as strong are her searing accounts of coming of age in a racist society: her own experiences and those passed on by older family members. One great-aunt, like the Ancient Mariner, had to make everyone listen to her family stories of what it was like to be a woman slave, stories you can never forget. In her various persona, Walker also talks intimately about bisexuality and her surprising discovery that she finds women sexy, even as she still yearns with a broken heart for that first husband. Whether writing about race, sex, class, or romance, she celebrates love that "requires us to become intimate with what is foreign." --Hazel Rochman
Guardian Review
At the start of Alice Walker's new collection of short stories is a memoir of her 10-year "magical marriage", which ended 20 years ago. It is addressed "to my young husband", and asks him in turn to address the question of what happened to them. "We were good people . . . Too good to have those years stolen from us, even by our grief." Walker's agenda is political as well as personal. Her divorce was not that of just any couple gone wrong, but of a union between a black woman and a white man in the "60s time of war". If they, inspired by Martin Luther King's vision, could fail, what hope has America, that "broken-hearted nation"? As the book progresses, however, through stories clustered around comparable couples, the possible "ways forward" become more optimistic. Love still may find a way. For those tempted by nostalgia, she contrasts women's lives in the 20th century with those possible in the 18th or 19th centuries. One narrator unthinkingly eats watermelon, but she can remember a time "in my lifetime, when black people were ashamed of watermelon". "We sure have come a long way," she concludes. At times the plots seem designed to facilitate their morals, but the most politically direct stories are suffused with Walker's characteristic witty banter and sensual playfulness - we can almost believe, for a moment, that a white man massaging a black woman with olive oil is the ultimate political act. Self-love and an embracing of "the foreign" are still key issues, and Walker has always been an advocate of sexual healing. The book is dedicated to "the American race", a phrase that Walker acknowledges comes from Jean Toomer, author of the 1923 modernist classic Cane . A strong believer in the unified national purpose of America, Toomer felt that race was a meaningless category and argued that interracial sex was the key to eradicate endemic racism. Ironically, however, his career proved the importance of race to "intermingled" Americans. When he refused to be published "as a black man", claiming, as Walker does, a multiracial heritage, he was no longer acceptable to those who had previously embraced him. Today Toomer features largely on courses on "black writing". Walker, too, is predominantly read, taught and even shelved as a "black writer" rather than as an "American" one. But what this says about the national "way forward" is something that she does not address. Caption: article-walker.1 The book is dedicated to "the American race", a phrase that [Alice Walker] acknowledges comes from Jean Toomer, author of the 1923 modernist classic Cane . A strong believer in the unified national purpose of America, Toomer felt that race was a meaningless category and argued that interracial sex was the key to eradicate endemic racism. Ironically, however, his career proved the importance of race to "intermingled" Americans. When he refused to be published "as a black man", claiming, as Walker does, a multiracial heritage, he was no longer acceptable to those who had previously embraced him. Today Toomer features largely on courses on "black writing". Walker, too, is predominantly read, taught and even shelved as a "black writer" rather than as an "American" one. - Kasia Boddy.
Kirkus Review
Using the accretion method that has become her trademark, Walker (By the Light of My Father's Smile, 1998, etc.) here offers a many-voiced, often lyrical story--but in discrete, oddly shaped lumps--of her first marriage and subsequent awakenings over the course of a lifetime of relationships. The first section, "To My Young Husband," is the most vivid and moving, as a woman, Tatala, looks back on her marriage 20 years after it ended, from the vantage point of a therapist's office in Manhattan where she sits with her ex and their daughter, now grown, who has brought them there to figure out what went wrong. The images of the relationship--a man, white, lawyer, Jewish, and a woman, black, poet, married and living in Mississippi in the '60s, just trying to have a normal life together with their child--are poignant, as are the sadness and Tatala's pain that they should have drifted apart. From there the focus keeps shifting: to another woman reflecting on how her family views her as an autobiographical writer, to frank portrayals of other women and the men they love, in spite of the yearnings they have to move on, to a man coping badly with his lover's absence, letting doubt gnaw its way into his heart, and to two sisters looking for the ruin of their uncle's house, a walk taking them back to childhood and a better understanding of who they are now. Finally, the male lovers are replaced by women, and the voices continue to explain the joys of being together, and the hardship of being judged unfairly, until a final voice, the author's own, offers a healing hand and her art to bridge the gap of understanding between herself and the husband of her youth. Many voices are heard here, and whether they preach or praise, coo or condemn, they all come from one heart. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Love may be a mighty balm, but Walker (The Color Purple) knows that it can also be unsettling, causing both lover and beloved to question their values, politics, and commitments. In seven beautifully written and astoundingly perceptive short storiesDadmittedly based in fact, then fictionalizedDshe homes in on the problems endemic to interracial romance and offers a near stream-of-consciousness reflection on her own ten-year marriage to a white civil rights attorney. It is powerful, jarring reading. But Walker treads lightly, conscious that the inevitable disagreements and betrayals that accompany relationships are what make us human. While several of the book's entries examine the problems inherent in black/white coupling, other pieces assess the ways we communicate woman to woman, sister to sister, husband to wife. Throughout, the book remains remarkably upbeat, urging us to chance heartache in order to connect. Brave and passionate, audacious and wise, this is Walker at her best. Highly recommended for all collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/00.]DEleanor J. Bader, Brooklyn, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
To My Young Husband: Memoir of a Marriage Beloved, A few days ago I went to see the little house on R. Street where we were so happy. Before traveling back to Mississippi I had not thought much about it. It seemed so far away, almost in another dimension. Whenever I did remember the house it was vibrant, filled with warmth and light, even though, as you know, a lot of my time there was served in rage, in anger, in hopelessness and despair. Days when the white white walls, cool against the brutal summer heat, were more bars than walls. You do not talk to me now, a fate I could not have imagined twenty years ago. It is true we say the usual greetings, when we have to, over the phone: How are you? Have you heard from Our Child? But beyond that, really nothing. Nothing of the secrets, memories, good and bad, that we shared. Nothing of the laughter that used to creep up on us as we ate together late at night at the kitchen table--perhaps after one of your poker games--and then wash over us in a cackling wave. You were always helpless before anything that struck you as funny, and I reveled in the ease with which, urging each other on, sometimes in our own voices, more often in a welter of black and white Southern and Brooklyn and Yiddish accents--which always felt as if our grandparents were joking with each other--we'd crumple over our plates laughing, as tears came to our eyes. After tallying up your winnings--you usually did win--and taking a shower--as I chatted with you through the glass--you'd crawl wearily into bed. We'd roll toward each other's outstretched arms, still chuckling, and sleep the sleep of the deeply amused. I went back with the woman I love now. She had never been South, never been to Mississippi, though her grandparents are buried in one of the towns you used to sue racists in. We took the Natchez Trace from Memphis, stopping several times at points of interest along the way. Halfway to Jackson we stopped at what appeared to be a large vacant house, with a dogtrot that intrigued us from the road. But when we walked inside two women were quietly quilting. One of them was bent over a large wooden frame that covered most of the floor, like the one my mother used to have; the other sat in a rocking chair stitching together one of the most beautiful crazy quilts I've ever seen. It reminded me of the quilt I made while we were married, the one made of scraps from my African dresses. The huge dresses, kaftans really, that I sewed myself and wore when I was pregnant with Our Child. The house on R. Street looked so small I did not recognize it at first. It was nearly dark by the time we found it, and sitting in a curve as it does it always seemed to be seeking anonymity. The tree we planted when Our Child was born and which I expected to tower over me, as Our Child now does, is not there; one reason I did not recognize the house. When I couldn't decide whether the house I was staring at was the one we used to laugh so much in, I went next door and asked for the Belts. Mrs. Belt (Did I ever know her name and call her by it? Was it perhaps Mildred?) opened the door. She recognized me immediately. I told her I was looking for our house. She said: That's it. She was surrounded by grandchildren. The little girl we knew, riding her tricycle about the yard, has made her a grandmother many times over. Her hair is pressed and waved, and is completely gray. She has aged. Though I know I have also, this shocks me. Mr. Belt soon comes to the door. He is graying as well, and has shaved his head. He is stocky and assertive. Self-satisfied. He insists on hugging me, which, because we've never hugged before, feels strange. He offers to walk me next door, and does. Its gate is the only thing left of the wooden fence we put up. The sweet gum tree that dominated the backyard and turned to red and gold in autumn is dying. It is little more than a trunk. The yard itself, which I've thought of all these years as big, is tiny. I remember our dogs: Myshkin, the fickle beloved, stolen, leaving us to search and search and weep and weep; and Andrew, the German shepherd with the soulful eyes and tender heart, whose big teeth frightened me after Our Child was born. The carport is miniscule. I wonder if you remember the steaks we used to grill there in summer, because the house was too hot for cooking, and the chilled Lambrusco we bought by the case to drink each night with dinner. The woman who lives there now, whose first act on buying the house was to rip out my writing desk, either isn't home or refuses to open the door. Not the same door we had, with its three panes at the top covered with plastic "stained glass." No, an even tackier, more flimsy door, with the number 1443 affixed to its bottom in black vinyl and gold adhesive. I am disappointed because I do want to see inside, and I want my lover to see it too. I want to show her the living room, where our red couches sat. The moon lamp. The low table made from a wooden door on which I kept flowers, leaves, Georgia field straw, in a gray crockery vase. The walls on which hung our Levy's bread poster: The little black boy and "You Don't Have to Be Jewish to Love Levy's." The white-and-black SNCC (Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee) poster of the large woman holding the small child, and the red-and-white one with the old man holding the hand of a small girl that helped me write about the bond between grandfather and granddaughter that is at the heart of my first novel. There by the kitchen door was the very funny Ernst lithograph, a somber Charles White drawing across from it. In Tupelo where I lectured I saw an old friend who remembered the house better than I did. She remembered the smallness of the kitchen (which I'd never thought of as small) and how the round "captain's table" we bought was wedged in a corner. She recalled the polished brown wood. Even the daisy-dotted placemats. The big yellow, brown-eyed daisy stuck to the brown refrigerator door. I wanted to see the nondescript bathroom. If I looked into the mirror would I see the serious face I had then? The deeply sun-browned skin? The bushy hair? The grief that steadily undermined the gains in levity, after each of the assassinations of little known and unsung heroes; after the assassination of Dr. King? I wanted to see Our Child's room. From the porch I could see her yellow shutters, unchanged since we left. Yellow, to let her know right away that life can be cheerful and bright. I wanted to see our room. Its giant bed occupying most of the floor, in frank admission that bed was important to us and that whenever possible, especially after air-conditioning, that is where we stayed. Not making love only, but making a universe. Sleeping, eating, reading and writing books, listening to music, cuddling, talking on the phone, watching Mary Tyler Moore, playing with Our Child. Our rifle a silent sentry in the corner. The old friend whom I saw in Tupelo still lives in Jackson. When we met two decades ago she had just come home from a college in the North where she taught literature. She'd decided to come back to Jackson, now that opportunities were opening up, thanks to you and so many others who gave some of their lives and sometimes all of their life, for this to happen. She hoped to marry her childhood sweetheart, raise a family, study law. Now she tells me she hates law. That it stifles her creativity and cuts her off from community and the life of the young. I tell her what I have recently heard of you. That, according to Our Child, you are now writing plays, and that this makes you happy. That you left civil rights law, at which you were brilliant, and are now quite successful in the corporate world. Though the writing of the plays makes me wonder if perhaps you too have found something missing in your chosen profession? She remembers us, she says, as two of the happiest, most in love people she'd ever seen. It didn't seem possible that we would ever part. It is only days later, when I am back in California, that I realize she herself played a role in our drifting apart. This summer she has promised to come visit me, up in the country in Mendocino--where everyone my age has a secret, sorrowful past of loving and suffering during the Sixties time of war--and I will tell her what it was. Maybe you remember her? Her name is F. It was she who placed a certain novel by a forgotten black woman novelist into my hands. I fell in love with both the novel and the novelist, who had died in obscurity while I was still reading the long-dead white writers, mostly male, pushed on everyone entering junior high. F.'s gift changed my life. I became obsessed, crazed with devotion. Passionate. All of this, especially the passion and devotion, I wanted to share with you. You and I had always shared literature. Do you remember how, on our very first night alone together, in a motel room in Greenwood, Mississippi, we read the Bible to each other? And how we felt a special affinity with the poet who wrote "The Song of Solomon?" We'd barely met, and shared the room more out of fear than desire. It was a motel and an area that had not been "cleared." Desegregated. We'd been spotted by hostile whites earlier in the day in the dining room. The next day, after our sleepless night, they would attempt to chase us out of town, perhaps run us off the road, but local black men courageously intervened. Over the years we shared Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy. Orwell. Langston Hughes. Sean O'Faolain. Ellison. But you would not read the thin paperback novel by this black woman I loved. It was as if you drew a line, in this curious territory. I will love you completely, you seemed to say, except for this. But sharing this book with you seemed everything. I wonder if you've read it, even now. Our Child was conceived. Grew up. Went to a large Eastern university. Read the book. She found it there on the required reading list, where I and others labored for a decade to make sure it would be. She tells me now she read it before she even left home, when she was in her early teens. She says I presented it to her with a quiet intensity, and with a special look in my eyes. She says we used to read passages from it while we cooked dinner for each other, and that she used to join me as I laughed and sometimes cried. What can one say at this late date, my young husband? Except what was surely surmised at the beginning of time. Life is a mystery. Also, love does not accept barriers of any kind. Not even that of Time itself. So that in the small house that seemed so large during the years of happiness we gave each other, I remain Yours, Tatala continued... Excerpted from The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart by Alice Walker All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
Preface | p. xiii |
To My Young Husband | |
To My Young Husband | p. 3 |
Kindred Spirits | p. 52 |
Orelia and John | |
Olive Oil | p. 71 |
Cuddling | p. 79 |
Charms | p. 89 |
There Was a River | |
There Was a River | p. 105 |
Big Sister, Little Sister | |
Uncle Loaf and Auntie Putt-Putt | p. 113 |
Blaze | p. 128 |
Growing Out | |
Growing Out | p. 141 |
Conscious Birth | p. 149 |
This Is How It Happened | |
This Is How It Happened | p. 169 |
The Brotherhood of the Saved | p. 175 |
The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart | |
Epilogue: The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart | p. 197 |